


Three Times Quinn Fabray Didn't Have a Girlfriend

by kbs_was_here



Category: Glee
Genre: F/F, Gen, Quinn Fabray is so gay, Skank Quinn Fabray
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-08
Updated: 2014-02-08
Packaged: 2018-01-11 15:55:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1174955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kbs_was_here/pseuds/kbs_was_here
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Quinn isn't sure how to process friendship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Times Quinn Fabray Didn't Have a Girlfriend

It happened back when Quinn was still Lucy and Quinn, as a persona, didn't actually exist.

It was summer, the break between fourth and fifth grade. It was the year she finally got to go to science camp and it was her first foray into nights away from home. It was nerve-wracking, in concept, because other kids didn't seem to like her much. It hadn't really been a problem until this last year, when Susanna Fisher had a slumber party for almost the entire population of the fourth grade girls in their class. All but two girls had been invited, Zelda Green and Lucy Fabray. Lucy thought Zelda was nice enough, but people made fun of her because her name was a video game. Later in life, Sam Evans would express a slight bit of jealousy over the fact that he'd never once met anyone actually named Zelda.

But the past of Susanna and the future of Sam aside, Lucy was looking forward to science camp as a chance to make new friends and learn new things. It was three days and two nights of experiments and stargazing and she'd been looking forward to it ever since her dad showed her the brochure, all the way back in April.

It was on the bus where she met Amy, a girl one year older, her silky brown hair tucked back under a red and white polka dotted headband that had some kind of glitter element to it that sparkled in the sunlight. They were seated next to each other for the seventy minute ride from the public school parking lot to the science camp location. The first elements of conversation were tentative, small talk about what school they were from and if they had any siblings, with Lucy begrudgingly admitting Frannie's existence and Amy competing for sympathy with the tales of being the middle child between two brothers. Midway through the ride, Amy had her hand locked with Lucy's as she smiled and suggested they be best friends. Lucy had never had a best friend before and she definitely had never held hands with anyone outside of her mom or dad when she was younger. So this, this was special and new and made her feel good.

When the bus stopped, Lucy's hand was sweaty, but her hopes were high as she and Amy were directed to their respective cabins and assigned to different camp counselors. She didn't see Amy again until dinner, but it was only for a moment as she passed her in line and even then, she only received a casual wave because Amy was clearly caught up in a story being told by one of the other girls, one with a bright smile and a tight blonde ponytail.

Later that night, all the cabin groups met together to watch the meteor shower and Lucy anxiously watched for the girls from cabin twelve, Amy's cabin. When she finally spotted her new friend, Lucy was so focused on rushing to meet her she walked right in front of a boy in a wheelchair and just narrowly missed being run over.

"Sorry," she mumbled.

The boy gave her a weak smile as adjusted his bulky glasses with a gloved hand. "I'm still learning how to drive this thing."

It was already dark and Lucy had to look twice through the smudged lenses of her own glasses, but this kid was wearing and honest to goodness bowtie. He was kind of weird but didn't seem mad that she'd gotten in his way so she just said, "Sorry," again, and turned back around to find Amy.

It took a moment, but there she was, sitting across the grass on a blanket with her cabinmates, but there was certainly room enough for Lucy. She didn't know any of the other girls, so she was nervous as she approached them, her eyes on Amy.

"Hi," she said, kneeling on the edge of the blanket. "Are you having fun, so far?"

"Who asked you?" said the girl with the ponytail.

"I... I'm Lucy."

"Is this a friend of yours?" the ponytail girl asked Amy.

Amy seemed to be incredibly fascinated with the texture and design of the blanket.

"We're best friends," Lucy said.

That was enough to force Amy to snap her attention upward. "No, we're not. I don't even really know her."

Maybe this was a joke. Maybe Amy was kidding. Frannie said stuff like that to her all the time, they way big sisters do.

"You held my hand on the bus," but even as Lucy said It, she knew it wasn't the right thing to say.

"Like anyone would hold hands with you," said the ponytailed girl. "You have... man hands."

That made the rest of the group snicker. Amy wasn't laughing, though, and Lucy took that as a possibility that maybe she’d realized these girls weren’t nice at all, that they weren’t good friends, certainly not as good a friend as Lucy could be.

“Get away from me, man hands.”

Lucy was in shock for a few seconds, but once she realized that they were all laughing at her she was on her feet so quickly she nearly collided with the bow tie kid’s wheelchair, again.

“Hey, you should maybe think about getting GPS,” he said.

Lucy just turned away and wrapped her arms around herself. “I want to go home.”

“Oh, well...” the boy wheeled around to look at her. “At least if you had a GPS, you’d know how to get there.”

This kid seemed like he was trying to make her feel better, but given everything, Lucy wasn’t ready to talk to anyone else. As she walked away from him, back toward her cabin, she heard him say his name was Arthur and part of her wanted to go back and ask if it was maybe because of King Arthur but then he seemed a lot more like Arthur the aardvark and by the time she managed to turn back around, he was gone, probably watching the meteor shower and laughing about the girl with man hands along with everyone else.

When Russell came to pick her up she didn’t tell him Amy or the girl with the ponytail or about the man hands. She said it was too scary and there were too many bugs. Russell, always the protector, was willing to accept that as a good enough reason.

He told her it was okay, that maybe she was too young to spend the night so far away from home, that they could try another camp next summer. He didn’t say that he could tell she’d been crying or that one of the counselors suggested some of the other girls had singled her out.

He hoped that maybe she would figure out how to stand up for herself. She was his baby girl and he’d do just about anything for her.

Lucy fell asleep on the drive home and when she woke up, they were sitting outside of an all night diner, the same one he always took her to for midnight milkshakes.

At least her daddy understood how to fix things. Even if it was only temporarily, it was enough to make her forget the evening’s events.

* * *

When Quinn Fabray began her career at William McKinley High School, she was still unfamiliar with the concept of anyone wanting to be nice to her without an ulterior motive.

After taking dance classes and losing the weight she'd carried through most of her childhood, after the nose job and the new hair color, after contacts and a newly found interest in athletics, she received plenty of positive attention, but it never felt genuine.

She was determined to make the best of impressions at her new high school and quickly climbed the coveted ranks of success within the most popular peer group in the Lima school district. Her ruthlessness caught Sue Sylvester's attention and Quinn earned the position of Head Cheerio, something unheard of for a freshman.

Because of this, people were nice to her, they sucked up to her, they got out of her way. It didn't mean they liked her. Even her bond with fellow cheerleader Santana Lopez was based around the drive to be better than everyone else and making fun of the same people.

Finn Hudson was nice to her because he was her boyfriend, because he was a little afraid of her, and because there was always the hope that she'd eventually let him touch her boobs. Even when they grew closer because of the pregnancy, it was more out of obligation and the idea of doing the right thing. Quinn knew better than to invest too much in any of that because what seemed right was actually terribly wrong.

That's why Noah Puckerman was nice to her, because he felt guilty, because he was, in some ways, competing with Finn for the glory of being the better man. He may have even actually had feelings for her, because she knew she didn't really strike any fear in him, but it was still motivated by an obligatory sense of providing for her.

Once the pregnancy went public, Rachel Berry expressed kindness, but then, Rachel wanted Finn and it would have been bad form to ostracise the homeless pregnant girl, now wouldn't it?

So, when Mercedes Jones offered Quinn a home, not just a couch, but a whole room to herself, Quinn looked at the situation from every angle, trying to find a reason why. They were friendly to each other in glee club, but they'd never spoken outside of school related activities. Though, there had been a heart to heart in the nurse's office and Quinn certainly admired the talent that Mercedes so clearly possessed.

When she moved into the Jones house, she learned that they both shared an early love of Motown, though Quinn was able to introduce her new housemate to more than just the artists who occupied the Best Of albums. They both attended church their entire lives, although different denominations, and they both believed that prayer wasn't pointless, that God was listening, even when it felt like he wasn't.

It was odd, having someone around who shared so many interests beyond the structure of the forced collaboration of Cheers or glee club. Some nights, they would stay up late, watching movies, sometimes laughing until they cried at stupid comedies or crying until the found themselves to be hilariously pathetic at the idea of shedding tears over a mainstream tear-jeaker.

Mercedes was her friend, plain and simple, and Quinn found this to be increasingly complicated the more time they spent together. Sometimes, when they watched movies, they would hold hands during intense scenes, the same way they would when Kurt was with them. Quinn had long since shed any self-consciousness of her hands, because having a strong grip, however "man-like" it might be, was crucial when it came to Cheerios. Also, she'd successfully passed the old nickname off on someone else, even though Rachel had the exact opposite of anything one might consider to be manly when it came to her tiny hands. Perhaps Hobbit Hands would have been better suited for her. If Quinn had still done that sort of thing.

She was too busy trying to salvage her own reputation to give Rachel grief over her physical features. Or anything, really. In fact, when Quinn had tried to boost her own “badass level” (that’s what Puck had called it), she put Rachel so far down on the “What’s Hot- What’s Not” list, she’d unintentionally insulted her by assigning her negative points for being such a damn goodie-two-shoes.

As much as Rachel dominated her thoughts, because she was always somehow part of Quinn’s plan to keep the heat off herself, it was Mercedes who left Quinn confused.

At night, once she’d pulled the covers up around herself while she looked up at the ceiling that still had glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to it from years before, Quinn found herself wondering thinking back on the day’s events, the jokes she’d shared with Mercedes, the heart-to-hearts they’d had about college plans, the music videos they posted to each other’s Facebook pages. Quinn wasn’t used to people caring about her without a motive.

Which is how she found herself sitting across from her friend one afternoon, textbooks in front of them as they both tried to tackle their calculus homework, and having a moment of realization about what all of this meant to her.

“Have you ever--”

“Hold on,” Mercedes waved her pencil in the air. She squinted a little as she considered the problem on the page in front of her, then finished jotting her answer into her notebook. Quinn couldn’t help but think it was cute, the way Mercedes put a little flourish into the last couple of notations. “Okay, what’s up?”

“Have you ever… like…” Quinn was nervous, now, bringing this up. “Did you ever have a friend you… liked?”

“Do you not remember last semester when I threw myself at Kurt so hard that he bounced out of the closet?”

“Okay, but what about a girl?”

“Oh. No, that’s--”

“Weird, yeah.”

“I was going to say, that’s not really my thing. I like guys. A lot. I mean, Beyonce’s hot as hell, but that doesn’t mean I want to make her my wife.”

“But if you did, think of all the shoes you could buy,” Quinn replied, grateful for the opportunity to play it all of as a simple round of ‘what if.’

“Girl, you might be onto something.” Mercedes flipped her pencil between her fingers. “But, uh… are you saying you… like someone? I did hear that it’s not uncommon for pregnant women to have kind of weird fanta--”

“Me?” Quinn fumbled with her calculator. “No, I was just reading one of Miss Pillsbury’s brochures about, you know, the percentage of kids who are gay and stuff.”

The conversation was left at that and then it was only a matter of weeks before Quinn’s water broke as her mother suggested she move back home. In the wake of Beth’s birth and adoption, the idea that Quinn had a crush on her best friend seemed a little ridiculous.

Besides, it wasn’t like Quinn was gay or anything.

* * *

Senior year. It wasn’t uncommon for her to find herself under the bleachers with Mack. Just like it was an average day for them to smoke through a pack of American Spirits with Sheila and Ronnie. But when the other two weren’t around, when it was just Quinn and Mack, it was a relatively common occurrence for them to disappear into the maintenance shed together to make out.

They weren’t fucking or anything. They were practically following Celibacy Club standards. Nothing under the clothes. Nothing below the belt. Nothing that could knock anyone up.

The first time happened because it was the request of the two college guys who were willing to buy them a six pack beer -- if they made out for at least ten seconds.

It was exploitation, sure. Quinn hated that about it. Then again, she’d spend many nights with boyfriends, offering up some lip lock action in return for her keeping her social status afloat. Was it really that different?

Mack just really wanted the beer, so she was willing to go for it.

They didn’t make out for ten seconds. It was more like thirty-five. And after working their way through that six pack of Heineken, Quinn wondered if they couldn’t do it, again.

They were sitting on the back porch of a foreclosed house a few blocks from Quinn’s neighborhood when they tossed the last of the bottles into the overgrown bushes.

“Now what?” Mack asked, leaning back on her hands.

“We could make out.” It was a joke, really. Kind of. In theory.

“Yeah, whatever. That could be cool.”

Quinn wasn’t expecting such a quick and positive response, but she didn’t waste the opportunity. It was sloppy and Mack kissed with way more tongue that any of Quinn’s male suitors, but once they found a balance, it was pretty hot, there on that back porch, which the summer night buzzed around them.

It was a relatively effective tool to get them what they wanted whenever guys with money were around. But the sessions on the shed behind the high school were just for them, just to tell the rest of the world to fuck off, just to give them both a little satisfaction in their day.

Until Rachel Berry showed up and begged Quinn to return to the glee club.

It wasn’t really a break up, because all they were doing was hooking up for the sake of it. Still, Quinn felt pretty lousy when she told Mack they were done. After Mack punched a freshman on the hockey team, she seemed to feel better.

And just like every other time in her life, when she’d thought there was something to be had when there really wasn’t, Quinn filed the experience away and carried on.

* * *

Then, there was Rachel Berry.

Rachel, who once suffered torment at Quinn’s hands. Rachel, who outed Puck as the father of Quinn’s baby. Rachel, who could, at times, be so singularly focused on Finn Hudson that it was mind-numbingly frustrating. Rachel, who had the best chance at getting out of Lima, Ohio and staying out.

Rachel, who would never listen to Quinn’s advice, even once they were kind of friends.

Rachel, who planned to marry Finn Hudson while they were still in high school.

Rachel, who looked so broken and lost the first few times she saw Quinn in her wheelchair.

Rachel, who finally got on that damn train to New York City and started a new life there. Away from Finn. Away from Lima.

Away from Quinn.

And, yet, Quinn couldn’t stop thinking about her. Every time there was an email or Facebook message from Rachel, Quinn secretly hoped it would mention the use of their MetroNorth passes.

They never did.

It was a phone call from Kurt that actually got Quinn to New York. Santana was there, too, and they all had a good time together, hanging out, catching up. It was enough to make Quinn want to find time to call her “kind of” friend and at least get together every once in a while.

It was a night with Santana that actually got Quinn to admit that she wanted more than a casual friendship with Rachel.

It took a couple of weeks for Quinn to work up the nerve, because for all of her ability to make high school boys wither under her glare, she was on foreign turf, now. She was also no one special out in the big bad world, far removed from her Cheerios career.

And once she was standing in front of the huge door that separated Rachel’s shared Brooklyn loft from the hall, Quinn wasn’t sure where to start.

Though, as the door rolled open and there stood Rachel Berry on the other side of the frame, it seemed like the best and easiest place to begin was,

“Hi.”


End file.
